Top 5 Greatest Christmas Films 🎄
Shamelessly selling out by ranking things for Christmas.
December is upon us and I’ve shamelessly compiled a list of my top five Christmas films to brighten the season. If that isn’t enough shameless pandering, I’ve also ranked my top five Christmas songs. This edition of IF YOU GO AWAY also includes news about upcoming dark art and horror events in the UK, but (you guessed it) because it’s December they all have a Christmas theme.
Writing these lists started out as a bit of fun, but by the time I finished, it felt like being a 15-year-old boy and the only piece of information that any family members can glean from you is that red is your favourite colour, so you wake up on your birthday and find that every gift is red and by the end of the day you’ve progressed to hating all colours, particularly red, and wish you’d never opened your big stupid mouth.
P M Buchan’s Top 5 Christmas Films
Although I write predominantly about horror and dark art, I’ve resisted the urge to try to sell you five cult slashers that only likeminded gorehounds would appreciate, instead recommending five films that fill me with joy. This decision was only partially influenced by the fact that I haven’t watched Terrifier 3 yet (which I expect to wholeheartedly adore), but also because I have a heart and winter is depressing enough without me encouraging you to sit through a series of promiscuous teens being bisected by savage mimes.
Without further ado, here’s a countdown of my top five favourite Christmas films:
5/ Krampus (2015)
This black-comedy features a topic that I became fascinated with around the time I bought my first iPhone and discovered that Krampus existed and I could search for photos of Krampus-related merriment around the world. When it came out, for some reason I thought that Krampus was a direct-to-video attempt to be the first to make a horror film starring St Nicholas’ behooved helper, so didn’t bother watching it until 2023, but I shouldn’t have been concerned.
The cast of Krampus includes some genuine stars, including Adam Scott (Severance), the awe-inspiring Toni Collette (best known for Muriel’s Wedding or Hereditary, depending on your preference), David Koechner (Anchorman, The Office), and Allison Tolman (Fargo). You’d be hard-pressed to make a bad film with those four actors, and this is a great film.
No real introduction is necessary here. This is a horror-comedy about a dysfunctional family who have to work together to save themselves from the demonic menace of Krampus at Christmas time. There are times when it verges on overly American and crass for my refined British tastes, but what would you expect when you’re casting David Koechner to play the father of an obnoxious all-American family?
Overall this is a fun experience, with a splash of gore, fun creature effects, and comedy that hits well, managing to balance plenty of dismemberment and sentimentality.
4/ Uncle Buck (1989)
I get it, Uncle Buck isn’t dark enough to feature on one of my usual lists, but how could I exclude my namesake? This is a tour-de-force from John Candy and John Hughes, during the directorial phase when he transitioned seamlessly from teen coming-of-age stories like The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off to more family-focused comedies like Planes, Trains and Automobiles, The Great Outdoors, and Home Alone.
Unlike the cloying tone of some of John Hughes’ earlier films, there’s a subversive undertone to Uncle Buck in its depiction of a grown man who begins the film utterly incapable of taking care of himself, let alone his nephew and nieces. Uncle Buck smokes, drinks and crashes his way through the film in a fashion not unlike Heath Ledger’s standout performance as Joker in The Dark Knight, outdoing Ledger by at one point microwaving his underwear and at another making pancakes so big they can only be flipped with a snow shovel.
Some people say that Christmas isn’t prominent enough in Uncle Buck for it to count as a Christmas film. Those people aren’t writing this countdown.
3/ Gremlins (1984)
Am I showing my age when two of my favourite Christmas films were made in the 1980s? I don’t care, being the father of two children basically added a hundred years to me overnight, so there’s nothing you can say about my decrepitude that would surprise me. Gremlins is a classic on just about every level, blending comedy, horror and mini-monsters with aplomb.
Marking one of Corey Feldman’s first feature films, I challenge you not to listen to Feldman narrate his memoir, Coreyography, and weep for the way that the film industry chewed him up and spat him out (acknowledging that he likely grew up to inflict just as much damage on others when the opportunity arose).
Gremlins is in many ways a perfect film, packed with heart and brought to life by one of the catchiest soundtracks known to man. Just as importantly, Gremlins represented the golden age of practical special effects in Hollywood, demonstrating exceptional puppetry that led to an equally incredible sequel and inspired a wave of subsequent mini-monster films and an insipid but mercifully brief attempt to channel the magic by ripping off the concept for Gen Z in Stranger Things season two.
2/ Why Him? (2016)
Nothing hits the spot at Christmas better than a feel-good romantic comedy packed with crotch-chops and dick jokes, Pink Panther references, toilet humour and cameos from Elon Musk. If this sounds like sarcasm, let me reiterate in complete sincerity that Why Him? is unironically one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen, up there with Step Brothers, Superbad and The Interview.
Following the attempts of Bryan Cranston trying to convince Zoey Deutch to ditch her idiot tech-millionaire boyfriend James Franco, at Christmas, this is everything I want from the holiday season, despite stealing half of its best jokes from the Pink Panther.
I’m aware that Franco is something of a persona non grata these days, but when a person creates a beautiful work of art, oftentimes that artwork will be the most valuable thing that they ever contribute to the world. I’m not in the business of believing that any endeavour as collaborative as a feature film should be binned based on the actions of an individual contributor.
Scotty Fleming: “These fucking moose balls are in my mouth.”
Laird Mayhew : “Oh shit, he's teabagging you, bro!”
Griffin Gluck, with his penchant for using the phrase “double-dicking”, steals every scene that he features in, though I confess to having a soft spot for Gluck because his 2019 film Big Time Adolescence mirrors my own teenage years uncannily.
Why Him? has everything that a Christmas classic needs. A dead moose suspended in its own urine. Keegan-Michael Key navigating futuristic Japanese toilets while Bryan Cranston tries to keep his bare legs crossed. A timeless romance for the ages. This is a puerile classic. The only thing missing is Seth Rogen.
1/ Silent Night (2021)
A recent addition to my Christmas canon, I’m not sure if you have to be British to appreciate the pitch-black humour of this devastating comedy or not, but the mixed reviews that Silent Night received upon release indicate to me that some people are tasteless hacks. Just don’t mistake it for John Woo’s unrelated 2023 action film.
Starring Keira Knightley (from everything but her abominable ruination of Pride & Prejudice) and Matthew Goode (Watchmen, plus he played a horny vampire in A Discovery of Witches), with Lucy Punch (unforgettable in Motherland), this is a heartbreakingly hilarious Christmas film about a bunch of toffs meeting for Christmas dinner at their country estate.
Silent Night plays out like a Richard Curtis film if Richard Curtis were more self-aware, less saccharine, and could see the humour in spiteful rich pre-teens calling each other cunts.
I watched Silent Night cold with my wife and our teenage daughter, without knowing what it would be about, and that’s what I’d recommend you do as well. It’s fun for all ages, features an aspirational black tie dress code and a mum who spent her daughter’s university fund on a single dress, everyone drinks too much and confesses to terrible things, and in my role as a downtrodden father I was literally crying with laughter by the time the kids started squabbling about whether their cans of coke were cold enough.
You’d have to have a heart of stone not to enjoy Silent Night and I recommend it wholeheartedly, but particularly to anybody familiar with the anguish of parenting ungrateful brats.
Special mentions for Elf (2003), which would obviously dominate every sane person’s Christmas list but felt too obvious to waste a space on. Elf ranks alongside Step Brothers and the criminally underrated Strays as one of the crowning jewels in Will Ferrell’s glittering career.
A shout out also for recent Christmas addition, Hot Frosty (2024), in which luminaries from at least three of America’s most beloved sitcoms were paid to forget how to be funny for over 90 minutes. I’d have felt more charitably about this if I were either more interested in Ted from Schitt’s Creek’s abs, or hadn’t felt like Craig Robinson’s appearance in This Is The End should have elevated him far above the need to engage in this level of senseless mediocrity.
P M Buchan’s Top 5 Christmas Songs
If you made it to the end of my tasteful top five Christmas films, you’ve earned access to my top five all-time best Christmas songs. Any fool can recommend Wham at Christmas time, and we all know that convicted murderer and terroriser of women Phil Spector’s Christmas album features the world’s best loved festive songs, but I’ve tried to sidestep the obvious by picking out my five favourite alternative tracks. These are the songs that keep me sane at Christmas.
5/ Drinking Up Christmas by The Dwarves
4/ Oi to the World by No Doubt (covering The Vandals)
3/ Fairytale of New York by No Use For A Name (covering The Pogues)
2/ I Want Your Soul For Christmas by Schoolyard Heroes (see also their Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel! for a Jewish alternative)
1/ It’s Christmas Time Again by Harley Poe
Selecting Harley Poe for the top spot was criminally easy, being my favourite band without question and the only music I’d want if I were stranded on a desert island. Schoolyard Heroes were an exceptional horror-punk band, one of the all time greats, with catchy song titles like Bury the Tooth of the Hydra and a Skeleton Army Will Arise. You can’t go wrong with basically anything that they ever recorded.
No Use For A Name were one of the quintessential punk-rock bands of the 1990s and 2000s, and frontman Tony Sly’s premature death was an absolute tragedy. No Doubt covering Oi to the World is one of those rare moments where the cover blows the original out of the water, capturing everything that was great about No Doubt when they still played ska. And The Dwarves just are what they are, which is catchy as hell.
Upcoming events
This weekend I’m heading to the Krampus Grotto at Bodmin Jail in Cornwall, UK, which runs every Friday, Saturday and Sunday December 2024.
If you’re in London, UK, look out for the Satanic Flea Market – AntiChristmas Fayre 2024 on Sunday 8 December 2024 from 12pm to 6pm at Electrowerkz.
Finally, the first OCCULTZ Weird Christmas Night Market will happen in Oxford, UK on Friday 13 December from 6pm to 10:30pm, featuring stalls from artists including my friends graphic novelist Owen Michael Johnson (The Mirage, Reel Love, Beast Wagon) and Satanic cartoonist Jason Atomic. I was already treble-booked that day, but will be there in spirit.
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